Clarifai is an artificial intelligence company that excels at visual recognition. We do not sell an abstract, futuristic technology - we sell a solution that people can use today to solve real-world problems. We believe that the same AI technology that gives big tech companies a competitive edge should be available to developers or businesses of any size or budget. That’s why we build products to make it easy, quick, and inexpensive for developers and businesses to innovate with AI, go to market faster, and build better user experiences. We make “teaching” AI just as accessible as we make using AI, which is why our technology is the most personalizable, unbiased, accurate solution in the market.

We have secured a $30M Series B round of funding and are backed by Menlo Ventures, Google Ventures, USV, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Osage, Lux Capital, LDV Capital, and Corazon Capital. To continue to succeed, we need people like you to join the team here in NYC!

Clarifai is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace dedicated to pursuing, hiring, and retaining a diverse workforce.

About

As a member of our Research Team, you solve research problems that we don’t have solutions for today through a process of prototyping, implementation, measurement, and iteration. You work closely with members of our Applied Machine Learning team to improve models and bring products to market based on your research. You would report to our CEO.

You help us kick off work in new domains for Clarifai or add new capabilities to existing product lines. We will look to you to apply your past hands-on experience with deep learning and also extend into research areas and domains that are new to you. You will continue to learn about advances in the field by reading papers and perhaps attending conferences, and your work and knowledge about the field will rapidly and directly impact Clarifai's product roadmap.

Important for the job is the ability to work in different modes:

skilled in rapid prototyping and quick experimentation

ability to write code that others can understand, adopt, and extend

Research scientists are expected to follow best engineering practices as appropriate for the stage of work, such as tracking work in source control, giving and receiving code reviews, writing tests for your code.

We are looking for someone motivated by having their ideas and creations out in the world in the hands of users and who shares our excitement about the potential of machine learning to positively transform our world. We value a collaborative, inclusive environment and seek those who are skilled at sharing knowledge inside and outside of Clarifai.

Your background should include three or more years of hands-on experience crafting and experimenting with neural networks, perhaps with additional years applying other machine learning techniques to a particular domain such as computer vision, text, or audio. Research papers or other publicly-visible contributions to the field are a plus. You should be fluent using a neural network framework such as TensorFlow, Caffe, Torch, or Theano and understand in detail how backpropagation works. You can work comfortably in Python and may have experience with common packages such as NumPy, pandas, and PyCUDA. Bonus points for experience with CUDA, the Go language, common database platforms, or search infrastructure.

Objectives

In your first month, you will start off by learning the ropes. You will...

ramp up on our deep learning framework and tech stack and be able to train, and evaluate models

implement a model based on a published network architecture in a familiar application domain

learn the role of research in Clarifai’s current products and road map

Within 3 months, you will...

develop a new model or improve an existing one

collaborate with data scientists or machine learning engineers to move research into production

6 months later, you will...

work on multiple projects at a time, some in collaboration with our Applied Machine Learning team, engineers, or other researchers

contribute improvements to models that are in production and in use by customers

lead and contribute to research in new or unfamiliar application domains

After a year, you will also...

lead research efforts on rare and open problems that we don’t have good existing solutions for today

identify new application domains and learning approaches that will be the next great offerings from Clarifai

represent Clarifai’s research efforts outside of the company and actively pursue speaking opportunities at industry conferences, events, and meet-ups

mentor and advise engineers and more junior researchers inside and possibly outside Clarifai

Impact

As one of Clarifai's Senior Research Scientists, you will have impact within the developer community, machine learning field, and on Clarifai's business by...

placing powerful, state-of-the-art machine learning tools at the fingertips of developers around the world

helping grow Clarifai’s business and influence in machine learning by being part of our innovation engine

raising the level for others at Clarifai and spur greater innovation across the company by teaching and transferring your deep learning know-how